In a typical workday, John Murphy receives hundreds of e-mails and just as many text messages. It’s par for the course for the Calgary Stampeders’ assistant general manager in charge of player personnel, who has built up a massive list of contacts with football player agents and coaches all over North America.

That kind of reach has come in particularly handy during this 2012 Canadian Football League season for the Stampeders because when there’s been a hole to fill due to injury — and the Stamps have had plenty of them — that’s when Murphy’s beloved Blackberry gets a particularly stiff workout.

“A lot of this stuff is about watching the game and the minute somebody gets hurt, I’m sending a text or getting a text or making a call,” said Murphy, one of the numerous unsung heroes in the Stamps’ 12-6 regular season and upcoming playoff home game against the Calgary Stampeders. “And the best part of the relationship here is that by the end of a game if there’s an injury, I’ll have sent (Hufnagel and the staff) three or four names with video.”

This season could have gone disastrously wrong with the injuries, particularly on the defensive side of the football. It started early on in training camp with defensive end Kevin Dixon getting hurt. Early in the regular season, it was coverage linebacker Demetrice Morley and various defensive backs.

Murphy along with his officemate Brendan Mahoney, who oversees the Stamps’ Canadian scouting operations but also made trips Stateside to scout NFL training camps, have been primarily responsible for bringing in the likes of Derrius Brooks, Cordarro Law and Anwar Stewart to help the Stamps get over the injuries with as little disruption as possible.

“When we had to plug holes, he brought guys in and most of them stayed and a lot of them played a lot sooner than anyone anticipated, and they played well,” said Stamps coach and general manager John Hufnagel. “So he has done an outstanding job along with Mahoney and the rest of the scouts.”

Murphy’s passion for finding football players goes back to his younger days growing up on Long Island in New York; his high school playing career was short-circuited (“I kept dislocating my left shoulder; my want-to was there. The could-to? Not as much.”) but he had a desire to be involved in football. So with his amazing recall of players from seeing them live or on tape, he began compiling scouting reports on college prospects who were perhaps off the radar of pro scouts, and sent them to every pro team in North America. They began to take notice, and he got a few scouting jobs before landing with the Stamps in 2007; he spent the 2009 season in Winnipeg as the Bombers’ director of player personnel before coming back to Calgary to scour North America for Stampeder prospects.

“He has an extreme memory,” said Hufnagel. “I’ll ask him about a player and he’ll tell me his school, how big he his and what his 40 time is.”

If Murphy has any desire to move up the football ladder in the CFL, he’s not talking publicly about it: “My focus right now is entirely on the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Calgary Stampeders.”

He was in the conversation the last time the Eskimos were looking for a general manager; in fact, the Stampeders denied the Eskimos permission to speak with Murphy because it was in-season.

But it’s only natural to assume that Murphy, and perhaps fellow Stamps assistant GM Mike Petrie (he oversees football operations), will be part of the rumour mill when openings in Edmonton and the Ottawa expansion franchise are discussed.

And should an off-season opportunity arise, Hufnagel won’t stand in his way.

“He’s an assistant general manager here, and if he gets an opportunity somewhere, good for him,” said Hufnagel.

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